Saturday, August 1, 2015

Now that we know Planned Parenthood basically see unborn infants basically as a parts-bin Soylent Green, maybe it's time for a simple, new tactic by Republicans and others who know that if abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

PP refers to unborn infants either as "products of conception," fetuses or embryos, depending on how long has elapsed since conception. And we know that the official Democrat political platform supports abortion on demand without limits.

Who exactly are the women who abort their babies? Well, consider that in New York City, more black babies are killed in the womb than are born. In second place for abortions are Hispanics.

On Friday [in 2014], the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Office of Vital Statistics released a report titled “Summary of Vital Statistics 2012 The City of New York, Pregnancy Outcomes.” As expected, the report showed an exceedingly high number of abortions and an exceedingly low number of births.

But the report also showed something more disturbing: a vast majority of the abortions came from the black and Hispanic communities – and in the black community, births were outnumbered by abortion by 6,570. Overall, 42.4% of abortions in the city were of black children; another 31% came from the Hispanic community.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, some 30% of all abortions in the United States are performed on black women, and another 25% are performed on Hispanic women. Rev. John J. Raphael of Howard University has calculated that approximately 13 million black children have been killed before birth since Roe v. Wade, representing a population decrease in the black community of nearly one quarter. Almost 40% of all black pregnancies currently end in abortion.

So: "Did you know that altogether 55 million unborn Democrats have been killed before birth since Roe v. Wade?"
Then let Debbie Wasserman Schulz explain why her own party wants to kill its future voters.

I will believe "black lives matter" when the people who say black lives matter start actually acting like black lives matter.

Update: Like the Germans compelled by the US Army in 1945 to tour the concentration camps, we, having seen the videos, now have no excuse.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

In an letter in 1864 to A.G. Hodges of Frankfort, Ky., President Lincoln began,

My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. ..."

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. What then would Abe say about this?

When the buyers ask Ginde if “compensation could be specific to the specimen?” Ginde agrees, “Okay.” Later on in the abortion clinic’s pathological laboratory, standing over an aborted fetus, Ginde responds to the buyer’s suggestion of paying per body part harvested, rather than a standard flat fee for the entire case: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”

The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2). Federal law also requires that no alteration in the timing or method of abortion be done for the purposes of fetal tissue collection (42 U.S.C. 289g-1).

In the second video, we find out explicitly from Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter that abortions performed with feticides aren’t viable for fetal-tissue donation. If digoxin is used, it renders the fetal stem cells unusable. (See the footage and the transcript.) Knowing this, Nucatola’s graphic explanation of how to “crush” unborn babies to maximize organ retrieval requires a clarifier. These babies are being strategically maneuvered, crushed, and dismembered under ultrasound guidance—while still alive.

And remember: you and I are paying for this via Planned Parenthood's tax subsidies. It's exactly as if the federal government in 1850 was sending subsidy checks directly to Southern slave traders.

On second thought, it's not like that. It's worse. Slaves were valuable only living. To Planned Parenthood, babies are valuable only dead.

The platform of the Democrat party, adopted in 2012 and unchanged since, is unequivocal: The Democrat party supports abortion on demand for any reason, including partial-birth abortion, without restriction by law for any reason. Read it.

Here, I am interested in talking about Islam’s truth. Almost every public, academic, or media talk of Islam goes something like this: “Most Muslims are peaceful. The violence comes from terrorists.” This approach is premised on two positions: 1) The original Muslim conquests of Africa, Spain, the Near-East, the Balkans, and all to way to India were “peaceful,” like they were the results of free elections and not, as was in fact the case, success in battle. 2) Those whom we identify as “terrorists” are not “true” Muslims. “Terrorism” becomes a kind of free-floating cult with no relation to anything but itself. Thus, terrorism is best explained in economic, cultural, psychological, or ideological terms that have little to do with “religion.” This view allows us to state the politically correct view that Islam is a religion of “peace” with no connection to “violence.”

Here I propose a counter-cultural position. I want to defend the integrity of the “terrorists,” as we insist on calling them. I want to grant them the “dignity” that they deserve. That is, they are not mindless products of poverty, ideology, ignorance, psychological mania, or any other excuse to avoid calling them what they claim to be, namely, loyal and devoted believers in the Qur’an, the real followers of Mohammed. It is senseless to pretend that a jihadist vision is not found in the Qur’an.

Jihad is the actual means of eternal salvation in Islam, and hads been since Muhammed himself.
The root of jihad is judh, Arabic for "striving“ or “struggle.” Jihad in Muslim theology is striving to defend or advance Islam or increase one's faithfulness to Islam. Jihad is not peripheral to Islam. It stands at its very center. Jihad is central to Muslim soteriology (its theology of salvation).

Jihad is theologically joined at the hip to sharia, Islamic law, for it is sharia that both commands and justifies jihad.

Muslim scholars and jurists distinguish between "greater jihad" and "lesser jihad," a distinction going back to Muhammad himself. Jihad, says al-Islam.org, has been conceptually corrupted in modern years both by Western usage to mean only holy war and by numerous Islamic groups, contending for power and influence, who have also overemphasized its military component.

According to Farida Khanam, the Arabic word jihad, by itself,

... does not connote the sense of reward or worship in the religious sense of the word. But when the word jihad became a part of Islamic terminology, the sense of reward or worship came to be associated with it, that is to say, if struggle is struggle in the simple sense of word, jihad means a struggle which is an act of worship, the engagement of which earns reward to the person concerned. As the Quran says: "Strive for the cause of God as you ought to strive" (22:78).

In historic Muslim theology, jihad more generally means striving toward equilibrium of Islamic character both within individuals and among the Muslim umma (the people of a Muslim society). It is therefore both individual and communal, both personal and social.

Says al-Islam,

Muslims as both individuals and members of Islamic society must carry out jihad, that is they must exert themselves at all moments of life to fight a battle both inward and outward against those forces that if not combatted will destroy that equilibrium which is the necessary condition for the spiritual life of the person and the functioning of human society. This fact is especially true if society is seen as a collectivity which bears the imprint of the Divine Norm rather than an antheap of contending and opposing units and forces.

Greater Jihad is similar, then, to what Christians call the spiritual disciplines, the need and effort to balance the competing demands of worldly living and religious duty, including the active avoidance of sin and doing of good. Muslim thought has historically considered Greater Jihad more difficult and more important than Lesser Jihad.

Lesser jihad

Lesser jihad is the use of authorized, righteous violence to defend Islam. In historic Muslim thought, lesser jihad can be waged only in accordance with the terms of a fatwa. A fatwa is a declaration by a recognized Muslim authority that can be on any topic. A fatwa for lesser jihad is a call to arms for Muslims to destroy perceived enemies of Islam.

Fatwas may be general or limited in scope. In 1979, the Saudi government endorsed a Palestinian professor’s fatwa against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the fatwa was limited to Soviet forces inside that country. It did not include the whole Soviet military or the Soviet Union.

Within Sunni Islam, the status and renown of the fatwa issuer directly affects how well it is obeyed and heeded. There is no official hierarchy of clerics among Sunnis, so a Sunni Muslim gains renown by scholarship, study, exampling, authorship, preaching and being recognized as a cleric (and boasting, but this is more Arab than Muslim). This means that any Sunni Muslim may issue a fatwa, but others can just ignore it.

Shia Islam defines who may issue fatwas. Unlike Sunnis, Shias do have a hierarchy, culminating in the office of ayatollah (“sign of Allah”). Ayatollahs are experts in Islamic studies. However, the office of ayatollah is new in Shia Islam, dating to only about 1840. And there is rank among ayatollahs, too, with Grand Ayatollah being the summit.

Whether peaceful or violent, jihad is a form is Muslim worship. Tajuddin B. Shu`aib explains Jihad’s association with warfare:

[F]or Muslims to wield weapons in a war in which Islam itself is defended - as the [Saudi 1979] anti-Soviet fatwa declared - is literally an act of worship. The Muslim jihadi has the right to expect reward proportionate to his sacrificial worship. In military jihad, the ultimate sacrifice is to die, which deserves the ultimate reward, immediate entry by the slain jihadi's soul into Paradise. This doctrine springs from the words of Mohammed himself, who during the battle of Badr told his soldiers, "I swear by the One in whose hand Mohammad's soul is, any man who fights them today and is killed while he is patient in the ordeal and seeks the pleasure of Allah, going forward and not backing off, Allah will enter him into Paradise.“

Hence, to be honorably killed in a recognized jihadist war is to gain immediate entry into paradise.

Salvation in Islam is entirely other-worldly, that is a state belonging solely to the afterlife. There is no equivalent in Islam to the Christian “Kingdom of Heaven,” that is partially realized and actual in the here and now, awaiting its final fulfillment in the eschaton. There is no Holy Spirit even conceptually in Islam; there is no presence at all of Allah on the earth. Allah is solely in heaven.

All there is between now and judgment day is the Quran and Sunna, Sharia law, and the umma, the Muslim people. But in no sense is salvation achieved, even marginally, in this life. Salvation is earned here but not accomplished until the day of judgment.

Muslims affirm that there will be a final day of judgment and that salvation or eternal damnation will be adjudged at that time.

Unlike Christianity, Islam has no concept of original sin - a stain of sin innate to human beings, present in each person even at birth that can be remitted only by God, not by anything mortals can do. In Islam, remission of sins can be done and salvation attained, but only by the believer's deeds in submission to Allah through Islamic confessions and obeying Islamic law. If a Muslim carries out Islam's commandments, then judgment day will be lightly borne. If not, disaster. Islam thus hold that salvation is solely achieved through works. “Grace” is not a concept in Islam.

Islam says that every person is born with a sound nature and provided by Allah with a true religion that enables them to have fullness of life through close communion with Allah in this world and the next. Each human is a religiously grounded person, created and endowed with a fitra, a ‘sound constitution’ that acts as a kind of internal guidance system and way to God.

The purpose of Islamic law, or Sharia, is

to form a society in which disobedience to Allah’s commands are difficult because everyone alike is oriented toward keeping them,

Hence, forbidden material or practices are (ideally) simply unavailable, so

Avoidance of sin is facilitated.

At the same time, there is unity of effort in doing good, according to the tenets of Sharia, such as everyone stops to pray five times per day, everyone plans or conducts the hajj, and so forth.

Avoiding sin and doing good is therefore both individual and social. Sharia lays out what is necessary to keep the commands of Allah (usually in great detail) in terms both negative (what not to do) and positive (what must be done and what is permitted though not necessarily required).

Obedience to Sharia is, in fact, what jihad is. Islam claims it is the only true religion and the only the way to God. Jihad is achieving "close communion" with God, and there is no other way. Jihad is literally the only way to paradise.

Jihad’s purpose is to earn the believer a place in paradise and is entirely dependent on deeds in this life. However, "loners" can't keep Islam’s commandments because Islam is "not a personal faith," according to Muslim jurist Sam Solomon. Earthly "close communion with God" can take place only within the Muslim community, the umma.

Muslims require the support and encouragement of a broader Islamic community living together just to be Muslim at all. That is exactly the basis on which a Muslim friend at Fort Sill, Okla., an Egyptian lieutenant colonel, justified his nightclubbing, drinking and womanizing. "This is not a Muslim country," he told me, and only later I learned this was a serious answer, not a dodge.

The fundamental basis of what Muslims believe is thus:

No one but those faithful to Allah's commandments can be admitted to eternal life in paradise. Everyone else, without exception, spends eternity in the flames of Hell. Islam teaches and Muslims take this dichotomy very, very seriously and literally.

There is no way to be faithfully obedient to the commands of Allah except through jihad.

The commandments of Allah are so difficult to follow that it is not possible except through the unity of an entire society all devoted to submission to Allah, called the Muslim ummah.

The only way that the ummah can be ordered to facilitate submission of its people to Allah is through Islamic law, sharia, which makes some commandments of Allah obligatory and makes others difficult to disobey.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Comcast has a bad reputation for customer service. To its credit, the company is aware of the rep and is working to correct it. I have to say that based on my recent interactions with the company, they have come a long way, but still have some work to do.

However, their greatest strides have come in value for the dollar and responding to cable cutters who buy internet service but not TV service. They use the internet to stream TV shows through Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV or directly from web sites.

We moved in June from one side of my county of residence to another. Both communities are serviced by Comcast. Comcast's web site has a rather pointless page to facilitate the move. You enter the date you want service to stop at the old address, the date it should begin at the new, take your equipment with you, and presumably you just hook the gear up on that date and you're back in service.

At least, that's the clear understanding you have from the web site. It is wholly false as far as I can tell. The moving page seems not to be linked to anything or anyone anywhere in the company. I still had to talk on the phone to a rep and make an appointment for installers to come to the new house. And it was for more than a week after we moved in. Nor did the rep tell me all the pricing information. For example, no mention that the cancellation penalty for Comcast Home Security was $30 per unused month of a two-year contract. He just bundled it in.

However, once installation day came the installers arrived early and got things going quickly. Where the company has made strides, I think, is in its bundling of TV offerings at no additional costs with the Xfinity X1 service.

In addition to the routine cable TV offerings, all the TVs in your home are now data-linked with the standard cables so that a program recorded on the DVR can be watched on any TV. Also, any computer on your home network can be registered with Comcast.com. Detection is automatic, you have to assent to register. Once you do, all Comcast's offerings, including every station you subscribe to, everything recorded on the DVR, and every online movie or TV show on the Comcast site can be watched on your computer, tablet or smartphone just as it it was a TV set. This works only on your home LAN. Away from home you can access only live shows online that have been available for quite awhile, not the full set, and a large library of movies and archived shows. However, Comcast says that it is transitioning so that finally there will be no difference in service between home and away; you'll get everything everywhere.

Their ploy has worked for me. I was considering cutting the cable but I enjoy this new service enough not to. I am a movie nut. While Comcast's library is not as large as Netflix's, it's still pretty big. And I can watch the movies on any TV or device in my house without using ISP bandwidth to stream them since they stream through the TV cable. Since one HD movie can use three gigs or more of bandwidth, that is a potential savings for people who stream a lot of TV or movies.

There are other features of the X1 system that seem useful and well considered. I have not used them, or used them enough, to assess them. But I like what I have used so far. If Comcast ever does transition to offering all the CATV stations online anywhere with a home subscription, I think their subscriptions will stop falling and probably increase.

BTW, I have for many years used, successively, a Slingbox and now a Monsoon Vulkano, both "placeshifters" for watching TV. You hook your TV incoming signal to the Monsoon and connect it by ethernet to your router. Then you can watch live every TV channel you get on a computer, tablet or phone via LAN or internet connection, anywhere. But the XI system is far more flexible and offers many more viewing options. When Comcast finally extends the full viewing options to "anywhere" rather than just on the home LAN it will be unbeatable.

Disclosure: I have no financial interest in Comcast or its competitors. This is just my opinion.

Mark Dice’s latest ‘man on the street’ stunt is perhaps his most outrageous yet, proving that leftists will advocate unbridled insanity so long as they are told it’s in the name of fighting racism.

Asked to sign the petition to support a 1% income tax on all white Americans in order to “even out the playing field” and redistribute the wealth amongst minority communities, the first man in the clip is incredulous that such a policy would pass but signs his name to it anyway.

"Hold on there!" Sharpton leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized a tall white man. "You, Belter! "Now, just what you think you're doin'? I reckon you think you're goin', just like that song - what's the words? 'Way up in the middle of the air'; ain't that it?"
"Yes, sir." The white man waited.
"You recollect you owe five thousand dollars of White Privilege Tax, Belter?"
"All the excitement, and it slipped my mind, sir."
"You're stayin' here to pay that five thousand bucks, or my name ain't Al Sharpton."

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Even CNN has broadcast that this was a Muslim's attack. (But of course, it has nothing to do with Islam.)

ISIS inspires these kinds of attacks. It will not be long before actual ISIS terrorists infiltrate into the United States and conduct them. Remember, ISIS has already boasted it has dozens of jihadists here. These attacks will worsen and become more lethal as long as the national leadership thinks that appeasing radical Muslims is the path to peace. (Except, I say again, they are not real Muslims, remember.)This was tweeted by an ISIS-affiliated account shortly before the attacks:

Monday, July 13, 2015

Since the civil-rights movement, which community organizers and Democratic elites capitalized on to increase their power, “whites, and particularly, institutions, have lived under threat of stigmatization,” says Steele. He explains that through this manipulation of white guilt, whites are continually put into the position of forever having to prove the negative, that they’re not racist. This is an impossible task, which is why we’ll never really be free of it. “If they don’t prove the negative, then the stigma sticks,” he writes.

The Left Incites Racial Controversy to Secure More Power

The Confederate flag controversy has never been about being sensitive to minorities in the aftermath of the dreadful mass murder in South Carolina. It has been about stigma and the Democratic Party using it to delegitimize anyone who doesn’t bend to its will. Steele explains that if an individual or institution in America is stigmatized as racist, then they are delegitimized. They lose all power and authority and influence. They are marginalized and ostracized. When that happens, they can be easily defeated or manipulated.

June 2033: Way in the middle of the air

"Did you hear about it?"
"About what?"
"The white people, the the whities!"
"What about 'em?"
"Them leaving, pulling out, going away; did you hear?"
"What you mean, pulling out? How can they do that?"
"They can, they will, they are."
"Just a couple?"
"Every single one here in the country!"
"No."
"Yes!"
"I got to see that. I don't believe it. Where they going - Europe? Australia?"
A silence.
"Mars."
"You mean the planet Mars?"
"That's right."
The men stood up in the hot shade of the hardware porch. Someone quit lighting a pipe. Somebody else spat out into the hot dust of noon.
"They can't leave, they can't do that."
"They're doing it, anyways."
"Where'd you hear this?"
"It's everywhere, on the radio a minute ago, just come through."
Al Sharpton, the race hustler, laughed uneasily.

Far up the street the levee seemed to have broken. The pale warm waters descended and engulfed the town. Between the blazing broken fronts of
the town stores, a white tide flowed. Like a kind of
summer molasses, it poured turgidly forth upon the cinnamon-dusty road. It
surged slow, slow, and it was men and women and horses and barking dogs, and it
was little boys and girls. And from the mouths of the people partaking of this
tide came the sound of a river. A summer-day river going somewhere, murmuring
and irrevocable. And in that slow, steady channel of whiteness that cut across
the white glare of day were touches of alert eyes, blue and greenish and brown eyes
staring ahead, glancing aside, as the river, the long and endless river, took itself
from old channels into a new one. From various and uncountable tributaries, in
creeks and brooks of color and motion, the parts of this river had joined,
become one mother current, and flowed on.

Al Sharpton wouldn't believe it. "Why, where'd they get the transportation? How they goin' to get to Mars?"

"Rockets," said Michelle.

"Where'd they get rockets?"

"Saved their money and built them."

"I never heard about it."

"Seems these racist white people kept it secret, worked on the rockets all themselves, don't know where - in the Deep South, maybe."

"Where do they get off, workin' in secret, plottin'?" shouted Sharpton.

"Schedule is for all this town's whites to gather out by Loon Lake. Rockets be there at one o'clock, pick 'em up, take 'em to Mars."

"Hold on there!" Sharpton leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized a tall white man. "You, Belter! "Now, just what you think you're doin'? I reckon you think you're goin', just like that song - what's the words? 'Way up in the middle of the air'; ain't that it?"

"You're stayin' here to pay that five thousand bucks, or my name ain't Al Sharpton."

Belter looked at the river going along the street, that pale white river flowing and flowing between the shops. He began to shiver. "Let me go, Mr. Sharpton. I'll send your money from up there, I promise!"

"You want to travel, do you? Well, Mister Way up in the Middle of the Air, you get the home and find that five thousand bucks tax you owe!"

"But if I work it out, I'll miss the rocket, sir!"

"Ain't that a shame now?" Sharpton tried to look sad.

Now as Belter stood, head down, trembling, an old man stepped forward.

"Mister?"

Sharpton flashed him a quick look. "Well?"

"How much tax does this man owe, mister?"

"None of your business!"

The old man looked at Belter. "How much, son?"

"Five thousand dollars."

The old man put out his black hands at the people around him, "There's a thousand white people around this spot. Each give five dollars; quick now, this no time for argument."

The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat and gave the hat to Belter. "Son," he said, "you ain't missin' no rocket."

Belter smiled into the hat. "No, sir, I guess I ain't!"

Sharpton shouted: "You give that money back to them!"

Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Sharpton would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Sharpton's feet. "There's your money, sir," he said.

The black men sat with sour water in their mouths. Their
eyes were almost puffed shut, as if they had been struck in their faces by wind and sand and heat. The
rage was in Al Sharpton. He climbed up on the porch and glared at the passing
swarms.

Far down the empty street a car came.

"I'll be, Sharpton, here comes your gofer now."

The car pulled up before the porch, a twenty-seven-year-old
white man in it. He looked at Al Sharpton and smiled.

"So you got a guilty conscience and came back,"
said Sharpton.

"No, sir, I just brought the car."

"What's wrong, couldn't get it on the rocket?"

"That wasn't it, sir."

"Don't tell me what it was! Get out, you're not goin'
to steal my property! Get inside and start compiling the mailing off the database."

"Beg pardon?" The boy's eyes widened.

"You heard what I said."

"Mr. Sharpton, you don't mind I take the day off," he
said apologetically.

"And tomorrow and day after tomorrow and the day after
the day after that," said Sharpton.

"I'm afraid so, sir."

"Well, tote that rocket, boy, lift that rocket, boy, go on, get blown up, see if I care!"

The white man cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted one last time at Sharpton: "Mr.

Sharpton, Mr. Sharpton, what you goin' to do from now on? What you goin' to do now, Mr. Sharpton?"

Silence. The man ran down the road and was gone.

"What did he mean?" mused Sharpton. "What am I goin' to do now?"

He watched the dust settle, and it suddenly came to him.

"So that's what the SOB meant?" Sharpton leaped out into the sunlight. "Come back, you racist, privileged oppressor! What am I goin' to do now? Why, that lousy, insolent son of a..."

It was a good question. He sickened and was empty. Yes. What will we do now? he thought. Now they're gone, what? He was absolutely empty and numb.

Slightly modified from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, chapter entitled, "June 2003: WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR"

Archives

This site has gone through a few iterations. Archived posts from March 2002 - Aug. 22, 2008 may be found at two URLs on the the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 2002 and 2003-2008.

This site became active in October 2007 and most of the 2008 posts at the link above are duplicated here. We sometimes transfer earlier posts from the previous sites to this one, but we do not revalidate the links therein. Posts on this site dated before October 2007 are transferred posts.